Safari Adventure

Noon over the Serengeti plains. From the Maasai word, ‘Siringet’ meaning endless.

The title of this post is a nostalgic nod to author Willard Price, whose adventure books for boys I read as a fourteen-year-old girl.

The quotes here, though, are all from Karen Blixen’s now-classic work Out of Africa (1937).

The geographical position and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent.

After an 18-hour journey by plane, we arrived in the Serengeti, Tanzania, in east Africa. December is when the light rains wash the expanse of the African savanna. No longer yellow from the dry season, the plains turn an unbelievably bright verdant green with high grazing grass—food for zebras, wildebeest, antelopes, and buffalo.

Enjoy these pictures in carousel format by just clicking on one of them.

The eagle’s shadow runs across the plain, Towards the distant, nameless, air-blue mountains. But the shadows of the round young zebra Sit close between their delicate hoofs all day, Where they stand immovable. “

“The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery.” — Karen Blixen.

Let sleeping lions lie.

A hyena comes close.

These Masai children learning arithmetic in their schoolroom.

Masai warriors performing their dance. ” . . . When the tall, slim, dark, and dark-eyed people travel, . . . or hold their dances, or tell you a tale, it is Africa wandering, dancing and entertaining you.”

While jumping as high as he can, the Masai warrior maintains a narrow posture and never lets his heels touch the ground.

Exuberance is beauty. — William Blake (poet).

The Masai women form a line as they provide a counterpoint in their vocals to the warriors’ song.

Masai warriors forming a semicircle as they prepare to perform the adumu, or “the jumping dance. ”

Entering a Masai village near the Ngorongoro crater.

The Olduvai Gorge is where the footprints of hominids were found and painstakingly preserved.

The Great Migration–Wildebeests and zebras making their way to the grassy plains in the south.

“In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning. . .”

A thin branch of cloud makes this sunrise the eye of the tiger.

“When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find that it is the same in all her music.”

The wide canvas of skies means no sunset is ever repeated.

These men are cutting grass around the lodge using machetes. It’s quiet.

Spotted! A leopard about 500 metres away.

Impala tracks. Notice how the impala’s four feet walk. Like on a catwalk, in a straight line.

A herd of impalas crossing.

“. . . those are the woods of the mighty, wide-branching mimosa trees, with thorns like spikes; the cactus grows here also, and here is the home of the giraffe and the rhino.”

The weaver finch gets its name because of their elaborately woven nests. This male weaver bird’s nest is woven from leaf-fibres, grass and twigs.

The tails of the sleeping lionesses dangle from the branches. Tempting.

Full after a meal, these three lionesses napped for at least an hour in the branches of a flat-topped acacia tree.

The handsome topi.

A bloat of hippos cooling off in the morning sun.

A pair of warthogs.

A jackal seen from the window of the four-wheel drive.

“The clouds, which were travelling with the wind, struck the side of the hill and hung round it, or were caught on the summit and broke into rain.”

The early morning fog blankets the bush outside the lodge.

The neat strokes on the hindquarters of female impalas.

The rhinos “looked like two very big angular stones rollicking in the long valley and enjoying life together.”

Wildebeest

A hyena running across our path early one morning.

Love the graphic quality of the zebra.

A warthog.

Hartebeest, a grassland antelope

The distance between the tips of the two horns is more than a metre on large bulls like this one.

A female impala.

The first of a series of black-and-white studies of animal faces.

Portrait of a lioness in the Ngorongoro (go-wrong-go-row) crater.

Food for thought: This hyena chews on a bone.

A silver-backed jackal.

Seen lazing in the river, the hippo cannot be judged by its cover. The third largest land mammal after the elephant and the rhino, the hippo can be aggressive towards humans and are considered one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.

A closeup of the giraffe, with horns made of stiff tufts of hair.

A dik-dik standing by the infinity pool of Bilila Lodge in the morning light.

Bilila Lodge on the Serengeti. “Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.”

“The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.”

“The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it.”

The wildebeests are the cattle of the African bush.

“The trees had a light delicate foliage. . . and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to the palms, or a heroic and romantic air like full-rigged ships with their sails furled.”

Noon over the Serengeti plains. From the Maasai word, ‘Siringet’ meaning endless.

A self-contained biosphere, the Ngorongoro crater even has it’s own clouds.

From the rim of the crater looking into the unbroken, unflooded caldera, which was formed after a volcanic explosion about two to three million years ago.

“. . . the giraffe. . . not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long-stemmed, speckled gigantic flowers slowly advancing.”